An Alabama Murder Mystery

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Discretion is it by its media murder. Every member of law enforcement has a

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handful of cases that stick with them
for the rest of their career. These

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cases are full of unimaginable cruelty,
making them think, how can someone do

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this to another person, Cases where
the perpetrator managed to dodge the consequences of

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their actions, or cases that went
cold despite the best effort of investigators.

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For the Sheriff's office in Mobile County, Alabama, there's one case that fits

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all three of these criteria, the
unsolved murder of Renee michel Bergeron. It

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was nineteen ninety three when the Mobile
County Sheriff's Office received a panicked nine one

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one call from a local motorist who
had seen something unusual lying in a ditch.

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This strange object turned out to be
the body of an unknown woman left

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in a shallow ditch by the side
of the road. When emergency responders arrived,

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they immediately knew that this was no
ordinary death. The body's head had

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been cut off and was missing from
the crime scene, leaving only an unidentifiable

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torso there were clear signs that the
woman had been tortured before she was killed.

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Her genitals had been heavily mutilated and
a bladed weapon had been used to

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make a deep vertical incision between her
bare breasts. For the paramedics who were

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responsible for moving the body, this
was one call out that was hard to

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forget even years later. Sheriff Tom
Purvis later described the unknown murderer as being

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someone who really headed in for the
woman, someone who wanted to try to

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mask the identity, and that was
one reason for cutting the head off.

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In most true crime cases, where
a murderer tries to conceal their victim's identity,

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think like a detective for a moment
and tell me why they'd try to

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do this. It's because they have
some kind of connection to the victim which

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could lead them to becoming a suspect
in the case. Like the rest of

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the investigators involved in the case,
Sheriff Purvis was convinced this killer had a

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reason for wanting his female victim's identity
to remain hidden. She had to have

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personally known her killer. But if
this had been the killer's strategy decapitating the

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body to prevent a positive idea from
being made, it failed dramatically. Only

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twenty four hours passed since the body's
discovery when the missing head was found nearby.

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The head was only in the early
stages of decomposition and was able to

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be identified as twenty seven year old
Renee Michelle Bergeron identification of the victim opened

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up countless leads for investigators to follow, and they began to dive into the

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question of who Renee was, hoping
that the answer would lead them to who

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killed her. It quickly became clear
to the investigators that Renee's life had been

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a troubled one. She had been
a pretty well liked teenager growing up with

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her five siblings in Louisiana, but
in her mid teens, Renee had fallen

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into the vicious cycle of drug addiction, an expensive habits that she was not

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able to fund. At seventeen,
she gave birth to a daughter, but

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because Renee was unable to take care
of her baby, her family looked after

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the child instead. Eventually, Renee
felt that prostitution was the only way that

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she was going to be able to
support herself. When she turned twenty one,

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she left her four year old daughter
and the rest of her family behind

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and moved to Mobile County, Alabama. Inmobile, Renee was able to escape

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from the feeling that she was betrayed
her family's traditional Catholic values, and she

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continued to work as a prostitute under
the name Maria Martinez. For the six

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years that she lived in Alabama,
Renee lived with a male acquaintance, Maurice

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Hill. After she was murdered and
identified, investigators became aware of Renee's relationship

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with Maurice, They quickly began to
wonder whether he had been involved in the

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murder. They didn't have any real
evidence against him, and he passed a

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polygraph, so Maurice was quickly ruled
out as a suspect. He did try

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to help the investigation and shared with
officers that he believed Renee had probably been

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killed due to some kind of dispute
over drugs. Her addiction had been leading

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her into dangerous places for more than
a decade, and it seemed as if

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this time the danger of the life
that she had lived caught up to her.

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Also, there's this Only a few
months before she died, she had

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faced charges for first degree robbery.
She had been accused of driving the getaway

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car during hold up at her nearby
motel, but there wasn't enough evidence and

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the charges were dropped. Renee's attorney, Rick Williams, believed that it was

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the robbery charge that led her to
her death, saying, I think some

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people involved in her case were major
drug dealers. I think she knew too

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much and they silenced her. During
his interviews with authorities, Maurice Hill was

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able to give investigators more details about
Rene's whereabouts in the days leading up to

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her murder. Prior to her death, Maurice had not seen her for several

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months. She had been out of
state, working in clubs and taking up

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modeling jobs for extra cash. She
had only been back in Mobile for a

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few days when she was killed,
and according to Maurice, her demeanor changed

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completely after her trip away. He
described her as seeming afraid of something,

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although he didn't know what that could
be. Tom Street, who worked as

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a criminal psychologist for San Diego's Academy
of Justice, worked profile Renee's killer.

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He believed that the killer had been
a psycho sexual predator whose criminal behavior would

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fit into one of two distinct categories. One kind of psycho sexual predator is

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more structured, more organized, and
manipulative in ways that go about selecting,

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stalking, and victimizing his victim.
He described the way that this type of

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killer would go to great links to
remove their victim from their original location,

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taking them to another place that felt
more private. However, the less organized

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and structured type of psycho sexual predator
would act differently, killing more spontaneously and

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leaving the body at the scene of
the crime. Both of these psychological profiles

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described a possible killer, but they
also described completely different behavior patterns. Even

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though Renee's killer had not succeeded in
concealing her identity, he managed to conceal

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his own, and the potential link
between Renee and the person who ended her

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life was ever uncovered. Over time, all the leads began to dry up,

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Promising tips ended up taking investigators to
dead ends, and finally all the

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avenues of investigation were exhausted and the
murder of Renee Bergeron officially became a cold

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case. But Mobile County investigators refused
to give up on finding out who was

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responsible for Renee's torture and murder.
Even after he eventually retired from his position

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as Mobile County's Sheriff. Tom Purvis
found it difficult to move on from Renee's

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murder and the knowledge that her killer
was likely still a free man. He

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had been the county sheriff for two
decades, and out of all the cases

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he'd worked on, Renee's murder was
one of those that had impacted him the

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most. The way that she had
been mutilated and the successful removal of her

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head, and the fact that she
had been carelessly disposed of in a ditch.

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All of these details made Tom Purvis
even more frustrated that he was never

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able to catch the killer. But
while the staff in the Sheriff's office wrote

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it into new roles, the impact
that Renee Bergeron's case had on the department

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remained the same. Despite not being
sheriff at the time that Renee's body was

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discovered, new Sheriff Sam Cochrane recognized
the importance that the case had for the

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county. He followed in Sheriff Purvis's
footsteps, hoping that time would provide them

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with new ways to crack the case
open. More than a decade after the

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murder, Sheriff Cochrane continues to have
faith that something will lead them to the

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identity of the killer, saying,
after a long period of time, a

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number of things can happen. People
lose their allegiance to others, People break

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up and make admission statements to others. If we get the right type of

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lead, and with the technology that
we have today that we didn't have fourteen

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years ago, all of these things
can benefit us. Renee Bergeron was surrounded

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by people who may have wanted her
dead, disgruntled prostitution clients, scorn drug

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dealers, thieves, and fellow drug
addicts. Law enforce Sin had countless leads,

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but every single one turned out to
be a dead end. Thirty years

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later, despite modern advancements and DNA
and evidence processing, her killer has not

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been caught yet. That's ten Minute
Murder for today, brief and bingeable true

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crime. I'm Joe the host,
and I really appreciate you listening. If

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you're new to Ten Minute Murder,
welcome, make yourself comfortable, and please

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subscribe now so that you can more
easily catch up on all of the back

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episodes. Connect with me on social
media and see the pictures what we talk

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about here in the podcast. It's
never gross and graphics stuff, though Zuckerberg

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would block me so fast if I
started posting crime scene photos. Plus I'd

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have to look at the crime scene
photos in order to post them, and

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I don't want to do that because
I enjoy being able to sleep. So

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no, thanks. And hey,
if you'd liked this episode, please leave

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a rating and review on Apple,
Spotify or any place that's possible. Your

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positive feedback is very much appreciated.
Okay, email question for today, Hey,

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Joe. First off, i'd like
to say thank you for doing stories

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on the murdas, like I asked
about before, And second, I was

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wondering if you could find some stories
from Alabama and Montana. The reason for

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Alabama is because I live here now, but the reason for Montana is because

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I've almost never heard of one from
Montana and I used to live there before

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I moved here. And a question
I've been wanting to ask is how long

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have you been doing these podcasts and
how did you get started? And that

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is from Neali in Alabama. And
I hope I'm saying your name right.

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I apologize if i'm not. Thanks
for the email, and welcome to Alabama.

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The story today I covered because of
this email. And as for Montana,

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I think it comes down to population. That's why you hear me talking

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about California a lot more New York
Texas Chicago, places that have heaps of

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people. I will do some research
though, to find a case from Montana

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that is a good fit for ten
Minute Murder. By the way, if

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you're listening right now and you know
of a case in Montana, email it

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to me Joe at ten minute Murder
dot com. And I've been doing this

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podcast since the summer that the pandemic
was in full swing twenty twenty. Like

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a lot of people, I was
bored at home and I have all of

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this audio equipment from doing voiceovers,
so I thought, hey, I'll start

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a podcast like one million other people
do. I picked a subject that I'm

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very much interested in, but then
also made it like a podcast I would

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want to listen to because I don't
have a lot of time to devote to

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listening to hours of podcasts all the
time, and my attention span isn't always

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when it should be. So these
ten minute episodes they're perfect for me.

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So that's why I created it.
Basically, I created a podcast for myself,

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and it turns out a lot of
you like it too, which I

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really appreciate. Okay, that's it. That is the episode today. Thank

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you so much for listening, and
if you're going off on other things to

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do, that's cool, but if
you're in binge mode, you're gonna stick

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with me. I'll see you in
the next one.